


Bluffing

by patxaran



Series: Leopikaweek2016 on tumblr [1]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Bad Puns, Bickering, Gen, Humor, M/M, Slice of Life, bluffs, inventing place names is difficult, rock balancing, rocky shores, surprisingly poignant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 08:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8197357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patxaran/pseuds/patxaran
Summary: Leorio and Kurapika go on an excursion to a rather underwhelming bluff. Leorio tells dad jokes because this fandom tells me that Leorio is a dad-friend.Let's see how many puns I can make about bluffs....





	

**Author's Note:**

> Puns are my favorite.

Everything that had seemed designed to bring them closer had only served to drive them further apart. At this point, it was doubtful they'd ever been that close at all. The distance, perhaps, hadn't actually grown, but had established itself more firmly between them, highlighting the insurmountable differences they'd never be able to overcome.

One lived to give life to others. The other lived to visit death upon his cringing foes. As far as the general direction of a life's course could be mapped out and predicted to go, these were two paths one could confidently refer to as "fairly disparate". Maybe this was the reason Leorio had dragged Kurapika out today. If the incongruent pathways of their lives would not converge in spite of all the desirous force of will Leorio applied to bringing him and Kurapika closer, then Leorio would settle to share the trail they now tread side by side through the woods of the costal reserve three hours out from the city where Kurapika currently resided.

"Did we remember to bring water?"

"There's plenty of water in the sea, Kurapika."

"You can't drink seawater."

"Use your healing chain when you begin to vomit."

"That can't possibly be your serious answer. You forgot the water, didn't you?"

Leorio shook the water bottle he'd just pulled from his bag and held it out to Kurapika. The moment Kurapika reached for it, he snapped it away, out of Kurapika's easy reach. Kurapika sighed in frustration.

"Apologize for doubting me," said Leorio.

"Only if you apologize for all the times you've proven I have excellent reason to doubt you. I mean each and every time. I'll be patient and wait, no matter how many hours it takes. I'm sure it'll be cathartic for the both of us."

"For that, you can hold the water the rest of the way to the shore. You've earned it."

"You take it back, or you'll never see this water again for the rest of the day."

Kurapika meant it. Leorio knew better than to test him. When Kurapika finished his sip, Leorio took the bottle back and replaced it in his bag.

Leorio and Kurapika reached the rocky shore after ten more minutes of what amounted to little more than leisurely strolling. The only bit strenuous about the hike was the time it took to reach the outcropping of rock that bore the seeming misnomer of being some sort of "bluff", when in reality it was gentler and more gradual in its descent than the sort of sharply cliffed headland such a name typically suggested. Leorio didn't claim to be an expert on costal geography, however. Maybe this was just the world's most underwhelming bluff, and he was being too hard on it for not fulfilling the sheer magnitude of his expectations. He should've asked Kurapika what a bluff technically was, because Kurapika was the expert in everything.

"Our map says this part where the trail turns off here is a bluff, but it looks real to me. What do you think, Kurapika?"

Kurapika didn't say a word. He wouldn't reward Leorio with a response to such a stupid joke. Leorio'd had over a half hour to come up with it in the time it had taken them to reach the shore. Kurapika wasn't impressed.

Kurapika led the way down the rugged, narrower path now before them. The reaching branches of the shrubs clung half-heartedly to his jacket as he went, as if trying to hold him back. In a few hopping strides, Kurapika emerged from the brush and out onto the expanse of rocks and boulders that tumbled from this point towards the sea. Cautiously, he picked an indirect path through them, gingerly checking the stability of each rock with his foot before trusting it with his weight. Leorio followed closely behind. He still chuckled softly at his immense wit even after being denied Kurapika's acknowledgement of his pun. The silence had been acknowledgement enough. In denying an answer, Kurapika had said everything Leorio'd needed to hear.

"Careful of the black patches. The wet parts of those rocks are really slick."

Kurapika cast an incredulous look back at Leorio over his shoulder, making apparent his utter disbelief that Leorio had thought to tell him that any sort of wet rock by the sea might be slippery. Leorio had been careful to call the growth on the rocks "black patches", though, and not algae, because he and Kurapika had already had the requisite debate over the fact that the black swathes of the supratidal zone were actually formed by bacteria. "Something something membrane-bound nucleus", or whatever Kurapika had said. In any case, it was black shit growing on rocks, and it might be dangerous, and Kurapika was ahead. That was the only reason Leorio had felt compelled to say anything, really.

Kurapika immediately struck out for a long, flat rock that was well out of the supratidal zone and thus without any black discoloration across its surface. He sat on the furthest, narrowest end jutting out towards the sea and let his left leg drape over the steeply inclined edge. He kept his right leg folded and upright to support the arm his head soon rested against. There wasn't much room for Leorio to sit beside him, so Leorio took a seat a ways behind where the rock had broken away and left something of a long bench he could sit on without need to cross his legs.

"You tired already?" asked Leorio. "We walked for hours during the Hunter exam. Hell, we _ran_ for hours then. You can't possibly be tired."

"You know I'm not tired. I just figured it's kind of useless to have walked all the way here and not take a moment to look at the sound."

"I can't hear with my eyes."

"Don't act like you don't know what a sound is, or else I'll have to explain it to you, Leorio."

This was a legitimate threat. Once you invited Kurapika to explain something to you, you had to kiss a quarter of an hour of your life away, and then only if you were lucky enough to have picked a fairly straightforward topic. Something as confusing as place name vernacular was probably going to take the better part of half an hour, maybe even longer if Kurapika was interrupted. Leorio wasn't ready for that. He never was.

Some people had an evil side to them, something just a little bad that was kept dormant and only stirred when awoken by an outside force pressing in. People hid inside them endless varieties of sleeping giants and dragons and monsters, all manner of hideous and repressed things. Kurapika, however, didn't contain true evil (that Leorio had an idea about). What slept in Kurapika was a pedantic bore, the great professor, the human encyclopedia. Kurapika only needed to rear its head threateningly in Leorio's general direction, and Leorio would quickly sidestep back into line. More ominous than any violent outburst was Leorio's all-too-real fear of the academic lecture that might be given at any moment, lurking forever just below the surface in this most fearsome side of Kurapika.

"When was the first time you saw the ocean?" asked Leorio. He rested a hand on Kurapika's empty left shoulder in a unifying gesture. He gave the narrow shoulder a gentle squeeze. Kurapika breathed in deeply, contently, at the contact, but also secretly hoped Leorio would move his hand soon before it got too hot. The humidity made such a gesture uncomfortable after a while.

"I grew up with the sea in all directions," Leorio continued. He wisely removed his hand now. "It was a much nicer sea than here, though. The water was always clear. The beaches are famous. Rich people built villas and developed most of the coast. But, the most beautiful beaches are the ones that are the most difficult to access. The ones you need to hike an hour and a half through rough terrain to reach if you don't have a speedboat and can't just pull up to them from the sea. On those beaches, the rich and the poor mix together. A friend and I got invited into a guy's yacht for a lobster dinner once. It was really swanky shit."

Leorio couldn't see any expression, any visible reaction from Kurapika to what Leorio had told him. Kurapika remained facing the sea. The sky far across the wide channel was dark and foreboding, and this seemed to have captured Kurapika's attention. If you didn't know you were on the edge of a sound, you'd perhaps think a storm was travelling up from the sea directly. It wasn't, though. It'd made a pit stop on the peninsula and hung around there for a day already. The possibility of it ever reaching the current shore where Kurapika and Leorio now sat was unlikely, although statistically still somewhat probable. As the wind picked up and the clouds grew denser, it seemed the forecast Kurapika had read might've been wrong, and that it just might rain today.

Kurapika looked east towards the wider ocean that couldn't be seen from here, but which he knew lay in that direction. His expression was questioning, faintly concerned, but he didn't make to stand. His decision proved the right one, as a moment later the wind slowed and the sun reemerged. This cyclical veiling and uncovering of the light would persist for the rest of the day. The temperature would maybe drop a little. However, it wouldn't rain. The wind that rose and fell was corralling the clouds to some further point up the coast. They wouldn't land at this spot, but would simply parade the ragged, precipitation-short edges of their furthest margins overhead before dispersing completely.

"I saw a ship graveyard on the edge of an inland sea when I was about thirteen. The salt desert of Dovunkay, which I saw later, is said to have been one of the largest lakes in the world. I finally saw the actual ocean when I was fourteen."

"Have you ever seen the Italiberian Sea?"

"No. Only the Strait of Friaxu."

"Well, then you're missing out. That's the best one. It's had my whole entire life to prove to me that it isn't, and it never has."

"How exactly are you quantifying 'best', though?"

"The whole world knows we have the best beaches. Not like boulders and rocks like here. It's all white sand."

"I prefer rocky shores. You can sit down without the sand getting in everything. Also, you can derive food from the different vegetation that grows among the rocks, which is something you always read about supporting seaside populations in times of famine."

"We don't eat much of that stuff in my country. Lots of seafood, yeah, but not that stuff."

"I also like the sounds. And before you say anything, I mean the audible sounds. The waves are always pressing and flowing through the spaces between the rocks. It's nice to listen to if you close your eyes. Like a mix between the ocean and a quick stream."

Figuring he ought to at least give it a shot, Leorio closed his eyes to see if Kurapika's impression was correct. The problem was Leorio'd never stopped to listen to streams before, so he couldn't say with confidence if the movement of the water here sounded anything like that.

"No," said Leorio after he decided to give up really listening and fill the quiet once more with his voice. "Rivers and streams always seem like they're trying to escape. But the ocean sounds like it's trying to pull you in by persuasion. If you fall into a dangerous river, the river carries you away fast like it stole you. The ocean carries you away as if you asked it to. Like your drowning was a mutual agreement between you and the ocean."

Kurapika laughed and turned to look at Leorio who was scratching his chin idly, eyes still shut as he contemplated the sounds of the rocky shore to no avail. Kurapika, crouched half on his hands and knees, moved away from the tapered edge of the outcropping of rock and back towards where Leorio sat on his steep shelf. Behind Leorio the rock was uneven with wide, slopping depressions rolling over its surface like hills. Kurapika settled against the incline of one of these depressions behind Leorio and lay back into it.

"I'm taking a nap," said Kurapika. He adjusted his hat to cover his face from the sun that occasionally peaked out from behind the thin gray gauze of cloud cover. The rock against his back was relatively smooth, like a slightly reclined bed made of stone. It would be easy to doze here a moment. Leorio had said Kurapika'd needed to relax anyway. Leorio'd dragged him all the way out here on that pretense.

"I'm going to balance some stones on the edge of that boulder," said Leorio with a tone of resolute optimism in his voice that implied he secretly thought this plan might not actually pan out. He pointed to a rather precarious looking point on the southern end of a large boulder a few meters away down the shore. Normally, Kurapika would've openly ridiculed or condoned such an idea, but he believed Leorio was tall enough to make it to the top easily. The question was how Leorio expected to climb up along with the rocks he intended to use.

"How are you getting the rocks up there?"

"You have to help me."

"I'm taking a nap?"

"Seriously? On a rock?"

"This part is comfortable."

"Then I guess we could say you've struck bedrock."

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

"Get away from me."

"Fine. I'll just do some practice stacking until you get bored and come help me. If you need anything, I'll only be a stone's throw away."

Kurapika lay back, planting his sunhat firmly over his face. He was very much done with talking to Leorio. If there'd been any loose stones within reach, he promised he definitely would've tested throwing them at Leorio.

Leorio walked back towards the rockier area of the shore to collect materials for his new, meditative art. There was a beach further down which had smoother, more elegant stones and pebbles, but the going was literally quite rocky, and Leorio wasn't in much of a mood to wander off without Kurapika. What if Leorio came across something fascinating or fantastic and needed to share it with someone? He was no better than alone as long as Kurapika slept.

Leorio watched Kurapika out of the corner of his eye as he collected handfuls of rocks that seemed to be of a workable size. The only part of Kurapika that moved was Kurapika's hair and clothing as they were lifted and blown about in the fickle breeze. Leorio already guessed Kurapika wouldn't sleep. Kurapika never could, so exposed and in the open. In a hotel that Kurapika had stayed in for three months, he'd moved the bed against the wall, and then settled himself carefully in the tight space between that wall and a row of books. Leorio had demanded to know what witchcraft kept those books from toppling over onto either Kurapika or the floor in the night. Kurapika'd shrugged and claimed to be a very sound sleeper.

When Leorio'd eventually replaced the row of books, he'd realized this seemingly ridiculous excuse had been true. Honestly, how Kurapika slept was eerie. It was lifeless. It was as if Kurapika were dead beside Leorio, except he breathed with a nearly imperceptible softness, and his eyes occasionally flickered in movement beneath their lids. The first night, Leorio had rather selfishly woken Kurapika up just to see his expression change. He couldn't remember the stupid excuse he'd given when Kurapika had asked him why.

"How's the silly stacking coming along? Have you got fifty of those towers erected yet?"

Leorio had been right about Kurapika not taking long. He'd only been napping maybe ten minutes before finally pulling himself up and joining Leorio amongst the rocks and boulders. His narrow shadow cast itself upon the current work in progress as he clambered over. This was the only work in progress so far. There weren't forty-nine more. Leorio had been having terrible luck.

"Things seem to have got off to a rocky start."

In answer to this punny status report, Kurapika swung a foot out as if he'd kick the teetering and pathetic tower down. Leorio swatted the approaching foot away, and Kurapika drew it back obediently. He squatted down across from Leorio to evaluate the work so far completed.

"But these rocks are all the same," observed Kurapika critically. "What sort of challenge is that supposed to be if they're all identical?"

"I'm trying to make it a meter high. I'm going for height, not beauty."

"And you think this is good?"

"Well, I think—"

"Don't say you think it rocks."

"—it ro….well, I think there's room for improvement."

Kurapika nodded. He took up one of the rocks next to Leorio and held it over the tower.

"So, I place it like this?" He set the rock carefully on top of the pile, adjusted its position slightly, and then slowly pulled his hand back. The rock remained where it was set. Leorio nodded slowly in quiet approval.

A second later the entire tower came crashing down.

" _Shit_."

"Things don't always go down the way you planned, Kurapika. I guess that tower was stacked against you."

"Shut up."


End file.
